Gallery Aferro

02/19/2024

Nothing Lasts Forever
Gallery Aferro 2003-2023

Dear friends,

Gallery Aferro will be closing down after a truly spectacular twenty-year run as a DIY artist space.

It is fundamentally impossible to fully summarize, let alone describe, all the projects, programs, collaborations or initiatives wrought since we began. This seems fitting: Aferro was experimental, expansive, and multivoice in tendency; animated by belief in radical generosity, risks, trust, and exchanges of ideas. These continue to be subversive gestures, in a culture that remains, at times, extractive and transactional.

As working people, we aimed to create and share resources, and upend conventional notions of who art is by or for. Connections made across difference and between generations were an important part of our work year after year, and we believe that the full impact and meaning of this work will be ongoing. It doesn’t end, it gets passed on.

Thank you for twenty wonderful years of community.

Gallery Aferro’s true legacy is every moment shared between people, a wildly dispersed constellation of memories held by all of us collectively and individually. If you’re moved to share a story about Aferro, we hope it will inspire, as example of what we can accomplish collectively.

Let the legacy be love.

Co-Founders, Evonne M. Davis and Emma Wilcox

02/19/2024

Evonne Davis + Emma Wilcox of Gallery Aferro recognized as 2024 Changemaker Award Recipients by the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Evonne M. Davis and Emma Wilcox co-founded Gallery Aferro in Newark in 2003. Considered one of the oldest alternative spaces in New Jersey, Aferro prioritized cultural work dealing with social inequities, economic struggles, and transformative change. In January 2024, after 20 years of supporting art and artists and organizing hundreds of innovative exhibitions, residencies, and community-engagement and educational programs, Davis and Wilcox announced the closing of Gallery Aferro. On April 27, as part of VACNJ's annual gala Positive Space, co-chaired by Susan + Michael Cagnassola & Briana King + Christopher Joralemon, Gallery Aferro's artist co-founders will be recognized as 2024 Changemaker Award Recipients for their tireless dedication to authentic, responsive community-based work.

02/19/2024

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey Opens Exhibitions Celebrating

Gallery Aferro: Dignity and Beauty
Le’Andra LeSeur and Anna Parisi: Bearing Witness
Kay Reese: 50 Million African Trees
Hidemi Takagi: IDENTITIES

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
February 23, 2024 - May 24, 2024
Opening Reception February 23, 6:30–8 PM
Daylight Hours Preview 4–5 PM

Summit, NJ —The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (VACNJ) will present exhibitions that celebrate the Newark-based arts organization Gallery Aferro, which recently closed its doors after 20 years. Founded by visionary artists and changemakers Evonne M. Davis and Emma Wilcox, Gallery Aferro was a platform for the exchange of ideas in service of advancing human dignity and beauty, with a focus on visual arts as the vehicle. The Art Center’s first-floor galleries will showcase a range of media by past fellowship recipients from Aferro.

VACNJ’s Main Gallery features the exhibition Gallery Aferro: Dignity and Beauty—guest-curated by Edwin Ramoran—that showcases works by Katrina Bello, Anjali Benjamin-Webb, Ruth Borgenicht, Amy Faris, Krystle Lemonias, kara lynch, Bud McNichol, Lisette Morel, and Steve Rossi. They are a select group of alumni from fellowships that directly served specific cohorts with support, space, and opportunities. Within this progressive, creative community, the Lynn and John Kearney Fellowship for Equity was awarded to women of color, while the Sustainable Arts Fellowship was for artists who are parents. The artwork presented here addresses themes of family, loss, memory, and place. At times visually somber, the work exhibited embodies the central message in Gallery Aferro’s mission statement for the advancement of “human dignity and beauty.” For more information visit Image: Hidemi Takagi

02/19/2024

Gallery Aferro: Dignity and Beauty at VACNJ - https://mailchi.mp/aferro/vacnj

01/01/2024

Nothing Lasts Forever: Gallery Aferro 2003-2023- https://mailchi.mp/aferro/nothinglastsforever

12/24/2023

Repost from
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Kea Tawana had a love of the natural world—most likely driven by all the ways in which it is an essential partner to survival.

Among her books are several volumes about foraging, basic gardening, and geology and she was known to feed the neighborhood’s stray cats. Included in her limited possessions are many specimens of rocks and minerals. The collection is sorted into nine drawers in a trunk weighing 137 pounds. Its burdensome weight suggests the importance Tawana must have given the collection. A selection of her collection were identified by Michael and Ruth Riesch of the Earthaven Museum in Gillette, Wisconsin and are on view at the Arts Center

Plan a visit to the Arts Center and explore Kea Tawana: I Traveled into the Future in a Dream and view pieces from her collection.

Photo: Kea Tawana: I Traveled into the Future in a Dream installation view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2023. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Gallery Aferro and Kohler Foundation Inc. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

12/14/2023

Gallery Aferro included in Top 12 NJ art exhibits of the year for solo exhibit earlier this year.

12/07/2023

Repost from
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Throwback to my piece “Redacted” in a gallery auction a few months ago and it SOLD
❤️

12/02/2023

The life of a community space is full of moments of human connection. This may seem like a rather obvious statement, but in an era of performative "content creation" we want to honor the sustained, long term endeavor of making a better world, whether it be through Friday's class visit from Arts High, or Saturday's organizing meeting of CWA Local 1037 and NJ Communities United. Here's to the next generation, and those who nurture them! Not pictured: very small visitor coloring, inspired by work on view.

12/02/2023